There’s a sound building in the back of my head. It’s a roar, like an oncoming train. Or, like a tsunami about to crash over land. Whatever it is, it’s coming. Fast and hard.

I can’t be in this car when it hits. I can’t be with Amira when this thing demolishes me. But I have to know.

“And my mother? What did they say about her?”

Amira shrugs, as if it’s a casual thing for her to talk about my family like this. To string our shames out in a neat row, like laundry pinned to the clothesline behind my grandmother’s trailer.

“They say she fixed his problems. I’m not sure what that means. Maybe that she buried evidence?” Another shrug. “She made it so that he was never officially charged.”

“And everyone thinks that? They all think my mother is crooked? That my father was a criminal?”

I knew there were rumors. I could feel the stares and hear the whispers for months on end. But I thought it was about my dad being in rehab. Losing his job.

Beckett Bergen, daughter of an opioid addict. Until I wasn’t.

Beckett Bergen, daughter of a dead opioid addict.

But I had no idea it went beyond that. No idea they were talking about my mother too. Or that they thought my father was a criminal.

Amira lays her hand on mine, and I swear her fingers burn. “I don’t think that.”

When I can’t figure out what to say, she frowns. “Doesn’t that matter, Beckett?”

Does it?

When I get home, Landry is in the kitchen, and the whole house smells amazing. Like garlic and cheese. It’s almost enough to make me smile.

Almost.

“Hey! What’s for dinner?” I set my backpack on a bar stool and steal a pinch of shredded parmesan from the bowl on the counter.

“Don’t!” Landry scowls at me as if I just threw the whole thing on the floor. “That’s the good stuff. Eight dollars a pound. It is not to be scarfed with abandon before dinner’s even done.”

“Mom let you spend eight dollars for a pound of parmesan?”

“No, our food budget would only cover the green canister full of the powdered crap. I bought this myself. But this was only an eight ounce block, so …” She shrugs, as if her purchase were no big deal.

Penn and I do dishes and clean the bathroom, but Landry’s only household chore is to make dinner five nights a week. In part because no one else wants to do it. She gets an allowance of ten dollars every week, just like we do. Which means she spent nearly half her allowance—her own money, outside of the grocery budget—on this cheese.

“What’s wrong with the stuff in the green canister?”